21–30 of 216 posts
Being from LA, I am used to a water system that works without needing power. I think most of CA is like that. It was a surprise to lose the water back east when the power went out during a storm.
My city runs on surface water, so we have treatment and then pump to storage tanks. You would have to be out for quite a while to run the city out of water, though - the tanks are large.
I wonder at what point the up-front costs of massive desalination would overcome the (often hidden and externalized) costs of projects like this.
I don’t think the brine pollutant issue has been meaningfully solved. You are also now pumping water inland uphill the whole way.
Nice picture but I've never seen the water anywhere near blue like that.
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do. I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
Being from LA, I am used to a water system that works without needing power. I think most of CA is like that. It was a surprise to lose the water back east when the power went out during a storm.
I know NYC doesn't treat their water at all, but LA doesn't either? My city runs on surface water, so we have treatment and then pump to storage tanks. You would have to be out for quite a while to run the city out of water, though - the tanks are large.
The aqueduct water is specifically purified by the Los Angeles Aqueduct Filtration Plant. That plant is gravity fed, but it doesn't operate without power.
LA just has the advantage of having mountains in the city, so it's cheaper building more elevated water storage so the capacity lasts longer during power interruptions (which are also not as common or extended as they are in the east). They will still eventually run out if they're not replenished by powered pumps.
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
It is an insane engineering achievement. A train literally running on tracks on a road that is floating on water!
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.